The present invention pertains to a dye-based inkjet ink set and, more particularly, to a dye-based inkjet ink set suitable for printing on a textile especially a polyamide fabric.
Digital printing methods such as inkjet printing are becoming increasingly important for the printing of textiles and offer a number of potential benefits over conventional printing methods such as screen printing. Digital printing eliminates the set up expense associated with screen preparation and can potentially enable cost effective short run production. Inkjet printing furthermore allows visual effects, like infinite pattern repeat sizes, that cannot be practically achieved with a screen printing process.
One area of textile printing ideally suited to digital printing is the flag and banner market where short runs are common. However, printing of flags and banners presents unique challenges. For example, ink is printed on one side, but must penetrate the fabric so that the image is equally visible on the back (unprinted) side as on the front (printed) side. In addition, while the ink must travel through the fabric, it must not travel laterally causing blurring and bleeding. This seemingly contradictory set of conditions is not easily achieved. Furthermore, the printed products will typically be displayed in sunny areas and the colorants in the inks are preferably resistant to light fade.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,847,740 discloses an inkjet printing process on nylon cloth. Co-pending and commonly owned U.S. application Ser. No. 11/070,711 (filed Mar. 2, 2005) discloses flag and banner printing methods and pretreatment solutions therefor. Co-pending and commonly owned U.S. application Ser. No. 11/173,595(filed Jul. 1, 2005) discloses a dye based ink set for textiles which contain acid dyes and co-pending and commonly owned U.S. application Ser. No. 11/070,711 (filed Mar. 2, 2005) discloses a dye based ink set for textiles that includes an Acid Green ink.
It is an object of this invention to provide an inkjet ink set having good gamut, light-fastness and penetration properties that is advantageous for printing on textiles especially polyamide fabric. The inkjet ink set of this invention provides an ink set in which each of the ink components provides good lightfastness. Previously described ink sets have had to rationalize a cyan ink with poor lightfastness as part of an ink set with other lightfast inks, or replace the cyan with another ink and modify the printing parameters to accommodate for the lack of the cyan.